This can't be good news. Auto Assault's North American and European servers are merging. I had heard rumblings of a possible server merge back when the news broke of the NCSoft lay-offs and the game is, at times, a virtual ghost town, so it doesn't really come as much of a surprise.

The good news is that NetDevil and NCSoft are still developing new content for the game and certainly seem to have a vested interest in keeping it going.

From the site:

Since the launch of Auto Assault, we have been pleased to find a community that is vocal, helpful and truly passionate about this game.

While we continue to work on adding much more content to Auto Assault and fine tune its many systems, we've also heard an overwhelming request from the community in both North America and Europe to merge the servers so the players have greater incentives to use the game's social functions. We agree with their assessment.

The merge takes place on July 13.

This raises an interesting question. With the incredibly high cost of developing a sophisticated massively multiplayer online game and the expectation that such a game will survive, if not thrive, for years, exactly how does a company decide when to pull the plug?

Obviously, MMOs aren't the same as other video or PC games. You don't just develop it, send it out the door and then wait for a big wave of cash to come back. There must be a constant evaluation going on to weigh the development costs and costs of keeping the game alive, which have to be significant, with the potential for earnings.

I suspect that with the advent of World of Warcraft and the flood of MMOs that have hit the net in the year surrounding the game's launch, these type of games suddenly have an upward battle when it comes to survival.
I may be totally wrong here, but I think WoW has made it much harder for an MMO so survive. What do you think? Brian Crecente

EU&US Server Merge [Auto Assault]

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